Students will collect soil samples and analyze them with some of the same procedures used by researchers in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Soil microfauna (e.g. nematodes) will be extracted from the samples using a Baermann funnel. Students will compare their own data to published data from researchers working in Antarctica.
Interview with PolarTREC teacher Paula Dell and her students from Lindblom Math & Science Academy about their underwater camera probe called "Fish Spy 2" to study icefish in Antarctica.
Article featuring PolarTREC teacher Paula Dell (Biology of Antarctic Fishes 2011, 2013) and her students from Lindblom Math & Science Academy high school in Chicago, Illinois who have created a Fish Spy robotic camera to study icefish in Antarctica.
PolarTREC has been an amazing experience, wow! The heart of the PolarTREC program is the field expedition, which allows the teacher to be embedded in a field research team. STEM educators are passionate about what they teach but often lack access to meaningful opportunities to participate in basic research. Programs like PolarTREC provide that missing
Teacher Josh Heward discusses research with the "Tough Tardigrades Team" in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica where they search for tardigrades and other microorganisms that live in the soil.
This lesson focuses on adaptations as a driving force in evolutionary diversity. Adaptations are characteristics within a species that enhance its chances of survival and reproduction. Adaptations can be behavioral, structural, or functional. Students must understand that these adaptations are not acquired in the course of the organism’s lifetime, but are inherited traits that have been passed down
Over three months in Antarctica, PolarTREC teacher Juan Botella took hundreds of pictures a day. He will now display many of those photos in an art exhibit entitled, "ArtArctic Science" at the Overture Center in Madison, WI. The exhibit includes not only Botella’s pictures but artwork by four Monona Grove high school students and two recent graduates.
PolarTREC teacher Paula Dell accompanied researcher Kristin O’Brien’s team to Palmer Station in Antarctica for two
months in 2011 to conduct research on antarctic fishes. This article describes their expedition, their evolving collaboration and includes interviews with both Paula Dell and PolarTREC project manager, Janet Warburton.
Cups decorated by students at the Monona Grove School District, Monona WI. Some of them will be shrunk by sending them to the bottom of the Ocean around Antarctica. during the 2011-2012 PolarTREC expedition "Sea water property changes in the Southern Ocean"